with your progress stretched out for miles
by Abvj
Summary: Sophie Devereaux from age eleven onward. Some years were better to her than others. General series spoilers with specifics for "The Radio Job" and "The Last Dam Job." Nate/Sophie by proxy.
1. Chapter 1

In my head, I've taken to calling this story my love letter to Sophie Devereaux. I wish I was kidding!This was written for the Heroine Big Bang over at livejournal. It is five parts total and includes both a back-story and a forward-story that picks up right after 4x17, _The Radio Job. _Quite a bit of care went into constructing a timeline that reflects canon. However, there were quite a few liberties taken where John Rogers & Company never mentioned specifics. Anything you don't recognize is purely a figment of my imagination.

Happy Reading! Con-crit is both welcome and appreciated. Happy premiere week!

* * *

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on. (Henry Ellis)

_**[ O N E ]**_

Across town, a warehouse near Baltimore's waterfront burns clear into the night. Sophie looks out the window of the hotel, the sky long-since blackened by nightfall, and sees the smoke billow for miles, the amber light of fire sparkling in the distance. Her hands still shake, just barely as she breathes and turns her neck to watch the gentle rise and fall of Nate's chest as he sleeps, as she counts his breaths one by one just to make sure he is still half-alive. They couldn't start the journey back to Boston after the explosion. Not with Nate in the condition he was in. Not with the lot of them still clearly wracked with shock. In the morning they will start over once more, devise yet another plan to take down Dubenich when their heads are little clearer, when Nate has managed to regain his foothold in this world that has always been crueler to him than most.

Her phone vibrates on the table next to her, and she reaches for it immediately, silencing it before the noise can wake Nate. It's Eliot, again, the text consisting of only two words: _any change? _Sophie's thumb fumbles over the keyboard as she types her single, two-letter word reply: _No. _

On the streets below there is a siren, some commotion a block over. Wincing at the intrusion of sound, Sophie moves to pull the window shut before climbing out of her perch on the windowsill. Her head pounds something fierce, her eyes heavy with sleep that won't claim her no matter how much she may want it to. Not tonight. When she turns back around, she realizes her actions to preserve the quiet were to no avail – Nate is awake, watching her every move, and she stills when his eyes catch hers, when she sees the bits of dried blood in the hair at his temples.

"How long have I been out?" he asks, pushing himself upwards on unsteady hands. The mattress creaks with the movement. She sighs heavily and reaches into her bag for the bottle of aspirin she keeps there out of habit. Slowly, she moves towards the bed.

"A while."

Nate holds his hand out expectantly and she twists the top off with a little effort, drops three of the tiny pills into his palm. He tosses them back without water, wincing slightly as he swallows. His eyes are red, his ears probably still ringing from the blast of the explosion. Sophie wanted him to see a doctor, borderline insisted, but Eliot said he was fine. Eliot promised her he would be fine, and Sophie trusted him to know. Still, she reaches for Nate out of what is slowly becoming something akin to habit, her fingers smoothing the curls at his temples, picking at the dried blood there. He reaches for her hand in an instant, shielding himself from her touch. This too is habit and the tiny part of her she tries so often to bury would have been offended if his fingers had not wrapped around hers for just a moment before letting go.

"We need to get back," he says hoarsely. "We need to get home." He winces at the sound of his own voice, the roughness around the edges, and she slides into her place on the bed beside him as he struggles to sit up straighter, the mattress giving under their combined weight.

"We will. Tomorrow."

Pushing himself off the bed, Nate heads straight for the mini-bar. Sophie sighs a little as his feet shuffle against the carpet, his gait unsteady, and she knows his world is completely off-kilter. When he reaches the far side of the room, he has to use his left hand as leverage to hold himself upright as he bends, plucking three tiny bottles of whiskey out of the refrigerator and pouring them all into a paper cup with the hotel's emblem splattered across the front. She raises an eyebrow as he turns around, and he catches it easily, pausing with the rim of the cup resting on his bottom lip.

"Choose your battles," he warns and sounds older, harder. His voice is still rough, filled to the brim with grief and anger and all the things he started to bury with alcohol years before she knew him. "My father is dead, Sophie. I think I'm allowed."

Still, he waits for the shrug of her shoulders, her version of practiced indifference masked as permission, before taking a sip. He finishes the contents in two solid swigs, the flimsy paper of the cup crumbling between his fingers as he searches for another bottle.

His feet are still unsteady as they carry him across the room once again. He falls into a seat next to the windowsill where she had spent the last three hours keeping vigil, places the unopened bottle of something amber and cheap on the table next to her phone. Sophie watches him unashamedly, follows the line of his shoulders as they start to crumble, as he heaves a shaky sigh and lets his head fall into his hands. Sophie watches and says nothing because she knows Nate and recognizes the stages of grief as he plows through them. Sophie knows what he feels now is a fine, dangerous mixture of depression and anger – two things he is intimately familiar with. His shoulders start to move softly and she stands on reflex, making her way over to him. When she's before him, when she is so close to him she can hear his sharp intake of breath as she runs her hands through his hair, he looks up at her and leans into her touch as much as he will allow himself to.

Still, now, in moments like this, he holds himself back with her out of sheer instinct. It breaks her heart even as she welcomes the familiarity.

"Did you know your father?" Nate asks softly, almost out of nowhere.

There are things they don't talk about, as a rule, and her history is one of them. A long time ago, Nate learned that there are questions that are better left unasked, topics that are better to never be broached. Her past has always been one of them. Sophie's first impulse is, and probably always will be, to lie to him. It takes every trained fiber of her being to resist the urge.

Nodding, she murmurs, "Once."

"Did you love him or hate him?"

Her fingers never stop moving, the tips of them running through his hair over and over. Sophie isn't sure if it is for him or simply to give her hands something to do. "I walked a fine line between both. Most children do, I think," she muses.

"Was he a good man?"

She pauses. It is a rare moment when she allows herself to think of her family, when she allows herself to remember the people she left behind all those years ago. These moments never fail to leave a bitter taste in the back of her mouth, a mixture of equal part guilt and regret, and she swallows around the acridness now as Nate glances upwards expectantly. These moments also never fail to unleash a spiral of memories that leave her both wounded and nostalgic, that haunt her for days, weeks afterwards. She fights against them now, uses the movement of her hands, the sound of their breathing to focus her energy, to fight the ghosts of her past.

"Not really, no," she replies too quietly. Her voice gets caught in her throat and her fingers fall from his hair to his shoulders, nails sinking into the skin there slightly. "He was instrumental in making me the person I am today," she tells Nate, a secret she's never shared with anyone before. She laughs a little after the words fall out of her mouth at the irony of saying them now, to him. "You and I are very similar in that regard."

"I'm sorry," he says and the depth of sincerity behind the words takes the breath right out of her.

Out of instinct and habit alike, she pulls back, distancing herself from being the topic at hand. Because Sophie can see the wheels turning in his head, can read the flickers of emotion on his face, she knows what he is thinking, what he needs to hear. So she says, "It's okay to still hate him, Nate. It's okay to love him in spite of everything, too. It doesn't maker you a lesser man. It only makes you human."

As soon as the words leave her mouth, he pulls away from her almost completely. He reaches for the bottle he'd discarded minutes before. His fingers fumble with the cap and the liquid slides down his throat easily as she watches, as he refuses to look at her. Nate pulls away, distancing himself from her and this conversation as fast as he can because he doesn't know how to talk about these things. He doesn't know how to talk to people when it isn't about a con or a mark. He stands, his shoulder brushing hers as he moves past her and back towards the fridge, yet another bottle plucked from obscurity in the process.

When he nears her again, he's struggling with the top, all thumbs as he tries to twist this one off. When he finally unscrews it completely, he tosses it onto the floor, looks right at her as he takes a long, slow swig from the bottle.

"Nate." Her voice is calm and soothing out of practice. At the sound of it, his eyes widen and flick towards hers accusingly. He shakes his head and takes a step back and away from her.

"Don't," he breathes. His voice is like steel, his fingers tight around the tiny bottle in his hand. He looks at her and she sees his anger simmering below the surface, feels herself prepare for it, her shoulders tensing, the breath she inhales a sharp hiss. She reaches for him, but he swats her hand away. His voice is near yelling when he says, "Don't handle me, Sophie. Don't you dare."

She doesn't back down. "Then don't shut me out," she replies, her voice still even and calm, her lips pressed into the thinnest line. "This team needs you, Nate. _I _need you." Her voice breaks, just slightly around the words as his eyes meet hers. Sophie watches the anger ebb out of him in an instant, his fingers unclenching at his sides. "And you need us. You can't do this on your own. You don't have to do this on your own. That's the whole point of being a team."

He deflates, falling back into the chair, his hands immediately reaching for her and settling on her hips as he pulls her towards him. She stills, not sure of what he wants from her and what she is willing to give, her breath leaving her mouth in a whoosh as he rests his forehead against her stomach. His shoulders move with a sob that shakes his entire body before choking off into a twisted, gut-wrenching laugh. She watches, concerned, her hands unsure of where to fall at first, before finding home once more between the curls on his head.

"I've spent so much of my life hating him. I've dedicated so much of my life trying not to become him and now that he's dead I…it's like this weight has been lifted but I don't know how to be without it. I don't know how to stop myself from becoming a man like him… " He trails off, and she feels the twitch of his cheek, watches his shoulders tense. She knows he is fighting back tears.

"You aren't your father," she tells him softly, and just like that, he allows himself to break before her.

They stay like that for a long while, Sophie silent as Nate grieves for a father he both wishes he knew better and wishes he could forget.

When they return to Boston, she goes with him as he buries an empty casket into the ground next to his mother's grave. She stands close, just within arms reach as the heels of her stilettos sink down into the earth beneath her feet. Nate mumbles a prayer from memory and crouches down, pressing his fingers first to his mouth and then to the granite, tips tracing the slopes and curves of his mother's name. Sophie stands there and watches him mourn all the people who have left him behind, all the ones that he couldn't save. She wishes so badly to be able to help him, to mend the parts of him that were broken long before she ever knew him.

It would be to no avail, of course, so she helps him plan his revenge instead.

The thing about people, Sophie knows, is that they are all fractured. Some are born that way, carrying their fault lines since birth. Others have the fine, hairline cracks forced upon them by happenstance; they are made imperfect by the hard-fought trials of life. If one took the time to look closely enough, they would find that everyone has points of weakness. Everyone has a single spot where all it takes is just the slightest amount of pressure to break them completely in half.

Sophie has always been better at hiding hers than most.

xXx

She was born in the midst of the coldest spring on record in Chelmsford. Her father was an entrepreneur of sorts – she wouldn't understand everything this entailed until much, much later in life. Her mother was a seamstress, excellent with her hands, and possessed a gentle touch and warm smile that was blissfully ignorant to all that she refused to see. She spent her early years carefree, happy, horribly impressionable and naive. Her mother taught her how to sew, her strong, nimble fingers fitting so over her smaller ones as they threaded the needle and guided it through cloth. Her mother also taught her how to appreciate art. Countless afternoons were spent by the fire, her short, dirty hands turning the worn pages of book after book on famous artists. Her mother's voice was smooth and enthralled as she spoke of the way Monet manipulated color or the painfully gentle strokes of Degas' exquisite ballerinas. Her mother loved Degas. She adored the breathtaking beauty of all art, but she loved Degas above all the rest.

This, too, she passed down to her daughter.

Her father taught her how to hunt on the weekends, how to choose her prey carefully by weighing the risks and benefits, how to spread her feet shoulder-width apart, to brace for the recoil, and most importantly, how to shoot and make it count. They were poorer than dirt, she would realize years later when she had perspective and distance, but she never wanted for anything, never yearned for a different life during those early years because she simply didn't know any better. Her mother never allowed her to know any better. She would hold her tight and never tired of whispering _I love you _into the soft curls at the crown of her head, never stopped murmuring over and over, _you are going to do great things, darling. Great, amazing things._

She was the oldest of six children – four brothers and a sister, but despite being outnumbered, despite being gangly and awkward with too-long legs and a crooked smile, when her mother died just shortly after her sister's birth, she was the toughest, the rock, the foundation her family needed to survive upon. She was the one to hold her family together when her father couldn't, when he lost the battle with the bottle and a broken heart. When he became reckless in every aspect of his life.

Her family buried her mother on a warm, sunny day in the middle of the summer. Her youngest brother fisted his tiny fingers in the fabric of a black dress that hung too loosely on her frame – the dress that belonged to her mother six children ago. His cheeks were stained with tears, his throat hoarse from crying. Her baby sister was cradled in her arms, swaddled in the blanket she had crafted with her very own hands; the baby's eyes were wide and bright, her smile so achingly familiar. Her own chin was proud, her eyes hidden behind tinted glasses that blocked the sun and shielded her away from the world. As she listened to the priest speak so eloquently of her mother, as the congregation of their tiny, worn-down church prayed for her mother's soul, her own _Amen _arrived a beat after everyone else's.

She was barely eleven then.

It was in the aftermath of her mother's death that she learned who her father truly was. There were always rumblings, of course. Aunt Emily never did look at her brother-in-law fondly, always made snide comments and jokes that fell flat, that made everyone shift awkwardly in their seats and avoid eye contact at holiday meals. She couldn't understand it all then, but soon after her mother's death, her father started piling them all into the beat-up, rusted station wagon on the weekends. They would trek all the way to Aunt Emily's, her brothers and sisters always dropped off in a rush, the youngest ones always clinging to her, crying fiercely as she whispered goodbye before she and her father continued on to London without them.

During those long drives she would roll the windows down, allow the wind to drag through her fingers as they drove through the endless countryside, and smile as the sun warmed her face. Her father liked American country music of all things and the sounds of it resonating within their beat-up station wagon made her miss her mother, made her long for the beautiful and soothing sounds of Beethoven and Vivaldi, the warm tones of the blues.

On the radio a man with a gravelly voice sang, _If you're gonna play the game, ya gotta learn to play it right_, and her father turned to her, every single time, his fingers thumping out the beat to the song on the steering wheel and said gleefully, "Listen closely, love. This song contains everything you need to know about life."

He taught her many things during those weekends: the art of the two-finger pick-pocket, how to read a situation like a novice, how to survey her surroundings in a short time span and take in everything they had to offer – the people, their positions, their mannerisms. He taught her when to push forward and, most importantly, when to walk away.

It was her father who taught her how to spin the truth.

On her twelfth birthday, he decided she was ready. They sat in a café near Buckingham Palace, dressed in their Sunday best, fitting in amongst the classy, beautiful people surrounding them, but not so much as to make a lasting impression on any onlookers. This, her father taught her during their very weekend in London, was the art of blending in. Her father scanned the crowd, his fingers tight around the teacup in his hands. He reached into his jacket and pulled out his flask, pouring a bit of amber liquid into the contents of his cup. She could smell it from all the way across the table and her face must have given away her disapproval because he caught her attention with a smile, nodded to an older man across the way – his version of an expertly placed distraction.

"Now," he began, his voice warm, his smile stretched too tight. "I want you to go over there and bring me back that man's wallet. Just like we've been practicing."

She preened, her neck craning just slightly to get a look, but not in an obvious, overt way. She shook her head as she settled back in her seat. "But isn't that dishonest?"

His laugh was both simultaneously crooked and warm. "It isn't dishonest if it's how you make a living."

There was a moment where she reconsidered, where she shook her head and adamantly refused, but then his smile started to falter, his eyes hardening, and she didn't want to disappoint him. After a moment, she rose from her chair and made her way over to where the older man was now sitting. She waited in the shadows for the waiter to pass by, for the exact right moment, planning it all out in her head: the faltering step, the gentle push, the fall of the tea against the man's crisp, white jacket, and, as a result, his indignation and distraction. All of which gave her the smallest, most fragile time frame for her to reach in and claim his wallet as her own.

She executed it flawlessly.

On a side street a few blocks over she met up with her father and passed him the heavy, leather wallet with excitement. He pocketed the abundant notes and tossed the rest in a nearby trashcan. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to him. She breathed in his warmth, allowed it to envelop her completely. She was so excited she could barely stand still. The intoxicating thrill of adrenaline settled in the base of her spine and lingered, setting her nerves and fingertips on fire.

That feeling didn't fade for a long, long time.

xXx

At the airport bar in O'Hare, she sits on a stool next to Nate. The glass of water between her hands is cold and sweating all over her fingers. Nate's drink sits off to the side, untouched for now, his eyes wild, fingers twisting around the napkin crumbled in the palm of his hand. His hands are shaking, only slightly, and he covers the movement by folding his fingers into a fist, by reaching for his whiskey and curling them tight around the tumbler. He steels himself by taking a long, thick swallow and motions towards the bartender for another when the glass turns up empty.

Sophie watches him closely, sees the wheels turning over and over in his head. She knows he's plotting and planning and devising plans A through Z without nearly enough information and too much emotional investment. It never leads anywhere good. Firsthand experience has taught her this.

On instinct and without thought she reaches for him, her fingers brushing against his shoulder barely. He recoils out of impulse, pulls into himself, and Sophie sighs heavily, almost too tired to begin the daunting task of pulling him back out, to keep him from retreating fully.

"Nate," she starts softly, just the one syllable of his name because she hasn't quite figured out what to say to him yet. She hasn't quite figured out how to fix this yet. He turns to look at her just as the bartender replaces the whiskey in front of him. His eyes are open and honest, red with grief and it's taken them so long to get here, to get to the place where they are starting to let the other in, where they don't trust each other fully out of instict and reflex, but the foundation is there – even if it is shaky at best. She doesn't want to backtrack, to push too hard, so she opens her mouth to speak and is not at all surprised when nothing comes out. After a moment, she tries again. Says, "Tell me what you're thinking."

Nate turns his attention to his hands, to the tumbler full of amber liquid between them. He raises the glass, takes a smaller sip. "I want him dead," he tells her, voice steady. If Sophie were a better person, if she weren't a liar and a thief, she would be scared for Dubenich's safety. But then she remembers that Dubenich tried to kill her friends, he tried to kill her family, and if life has taught her anything it is that everything evens out in the long run.

Still, the way Nate laughs after the words leave his mouth – cold and maniacal – makes her skin crawl.

Her drink continues to sweat all over her fingers, but she doesn't let go of the glass. She doesn't want to show him the slight shake of her own hands, the weakness it signifies. "Do you honestly think that will make you feel better? Do you think that will solve all of your problems?"

"Probably not." He finishes yet another drink, winces, and turns to face her. "But it might make me feel better."

"I can assure you that feeling does not last long."

The look he gives her is pointed, full of question. Sophie stiffens on reflex, shifts in her seat to get more comfortable, to hide how unnerved she is under his watchful gaze.

"Sounds like you're speaking from experience."

"Perhaps I am." The bartender makes his way over to them once more, another drink of whiskey in hand, but Sophie cuts him off with a look. The younger man stops dead in his tracks and re-considers; Sophie is more than thankful. "Still, Nate, there are better, _different _ways. I don't care who you may think you are. You are not that man."

Nate actively refuses to look at her as he says, "You don't know that."

It's Sophie's turn to laugh and she does, the sound short, without mirth, and borderline annoyed. She shifts in her seat, rests her weight on the back of the stool. She's tired today. Her bones are tired. Her reserves are beyond exhausted and she honestly cannot remember ever feeling this old before, this so incredibly worn down by the world around her. This isn't the time to have this conversation; she knows this. Nate is angry, grasping at straws, trying to push her away and test her loyalties all in one breath because that is how he copes, that is how he blindly navigates the five steps of grief.

Sophie doesn't allow it, but she is too incredibly exhausted to argue with him about the misplaced ideologies behind seeking revenge for any and all wrongdoings.

So instead, she merely takes a long sip of her now lukewarm water and says, "I do. I do know you, Nate. I know that right now, in this moment, you want nothing more than to be that guy because you think that guy has all the answers." She reaches for him again, her fingers solid, certain against the crook of his arm, lingering over the bone of his elbow. Her fingers leave damp spots in their wake. He doesn't recoil, but instead leans into her touch, just a fraction of an inch. Sophie takes it as a personal victory. "But you aren't. You never have been."

Overhead their flight is called. Nate moves to stand, throwing a few bills on the bar top and pushing his stool in with the toe of his foot. She watches as he stills, as he turns to face her, his face ashen and stoic.

"You're either with me or you're not," he says, and his tone is curt, clipped, but his eyes give him away.

It says entirely way too much about who they are to one another that she doesn't hesitate before nodding, before moving to stand and following him back to Boston.

xXx

School was easy. Lies were easier.

With time, effort, and experience she learned how to invent a version of herself that almost everyone found irresistible – she was smart, talented, _revered. _She had a gift for reading people, for knowing the intention, the truth behind every quirk of an eyebrow, every shift of fingers, and every single word chosen to speak aloud. She had an even greater gift for categorizing and compartmentalizing every thing she read, every thing she saw. She was beyond brilliant, but she never allowed it to show. Nobody, she quickly discovered, liked a know-it-all, a show off, so instead she played her card close to her vest. She toned down her brilliance for those who needed to feel superior, and used it to command attention from those who would appreciate it, who would understand it.

Most of all, however, she was a wonderful artist. The feel of the paintbrush in her hand reminded her of her mother. The soft, barely-there sound of the bristles sliding across canvas reminded her of the way her mother would whisper i_I love you/i _over and over, and how deeply she felt the truth in the words. How much she missed the affirmation now that her mother was gone.

Her life as a con artist started with a Degas, of course. It was only fitting. She spent an entire evening, from dusk to dawn, replicating every stroke, every color, every slope and curve of the ballerina's stature. The replication was so utterly flawless that to the untrained eye, to even some of the better-trained eyes, it could have passed as the real thing. Her father, of course, saw this as an opportunity, and as she watched gleefully as he stared at the painting the next morning, she saw the emotions flicker across his usually guarded face – the excitement, the indecision, the awe.

And then, of course, she saw the plan forming, the caveats coming together perfectly.

It all started simply enough. Her father would scope out a target – a target so wealthy he probably wouldn't even bat an eye at a missing masterpiece – with an exquisite art collection and she would replicate whatever piece from the collection that caught her father's attention, a piece that wasn't the most expensive, but, instead, just expensive enough. Her father would make the switch using means she was not privy to, and then he would pass the original to a trustworthy fence, and pocket quite a bit of money. The plan was practically foolproof. They repeated it so often and so well that it became routine and with that routine, with the success, her father changed into a different man – he became greedy, careless and because of it, because of his recklessness and his obsession with the bottle it all took a turn the day before her sixteenth birthday.

Long gone were the weekends spent in London with her father. Now, she only found her way to the city on Friday afternoons. She spent her time in museums, cafés, collecting wallets and appreciating art, admiring the masterpieces of others, tracing lines and colors and shapes with her eyes, categorizing them for future use. After, she usually found her way to that very same café, the one her father took her to years before. She drank tea paid for with money that belonged to somebody else, a book on Matisse or Rousseau spread out before her, fingers turning the page meticulously.

It was on one of those afternoons that she met Gabrielle – young, beautiful, elegant Gabrielle. She was older, of course. She was the picture of class with a Parisian accent that was both practiced and impeccable, her blonde hair long and full of waves. Gabrielle smiled through her teeth in lieu of a greeting, the curl of her lips worn and dangerous but her tone was smooth, like money. The creases that were just barely beginning to form at the corners of her mouth and the center of her forehead gave her away, however. Her life had not always been easy, was definitely not the picture of perfection she tried so hard to exude, but she wore the reminders proudly, and made them work to her advantage.

One afternoon just before her sixteenth birthday, Gabrielle noiselessly slid into a seat across from her at the café and did not hesitate to tell her a story about how somebody had stolen her newly acquired _La Fougere Noire_ while she was out of town and replaced it with a remarkable forgery. A forgery, she said, that probably would have made Matisse proud. At first, the woman explained, she was angry. Absolutely livid. The woman didn't take kindly to being stolen from and she definitely didn't take kindly to being fooled. Then, after she had taken a step back and reevaluated the situation, she realized there was a greater matter at hand: somebody had managed to fool her, even if it was just for a little while, and she just had to meet that person, had to compliment them on a job well done.

"Don't bother to deny it, dear," Gabrielle said, lips quirking upwards slightly. "The twitch of your mouth when I complimented your work gave you away," she explained. "Besides, I am not here to question you. I'm not even here to turn you into the police – especially since the painting wasn't exactly in my lawful possession. I am here to offer you a job."

"A job?"

Gabrielle laughed, her shoulders shaking just slightly with the movement. "Yes. You see, I am what you could call… an expert at persuasion. My friend over there," she pointed somewhere in the back of the café where a man sat comfortably, his nose was buried in a paper, "Is a retrieval expert. I need somebody who excels in replications. It's a very big job and it means a very large amount of money." She paused, waiting a calculated beat before continuing, "You could buy a pair of these shoes that you've been eyeing since you noticed I was sitting across from you."

She shifted in her seat and wished her father was there. It was easier when it was him calling the shots. It was easier when she didn't know the sordid details, when all she had to do was paint, blending colors and recreating slopes and curves and angles until they formed something beautiful. She trusted her father. She trusted that her father would do right by her no matter what – even if that trust was naively misplaced. Still, as she glanced at the woman sitting across the table in her expensive shoes and suit and wide-rimmed sunglasses, she couldn't help but envy the grace and elegance she possessed. She couldn't help but yearn for that thrill of the chase, that rush of adrenaline that came after a good lift, or a seamless bait-and-switch.

She just couldn't help but want more.

"What would this job entail?" she asked quietly. She reached for her cup of tea to busy her hands.

Shaking her head, Gabrielle's lips curled. She slid her sunglasses off her face and placed them to the side. It was the first time she was able to meet her eyes, was able to read the inferences between the words. There was the tiniest bit of honesty there that absolutely floored her.

"I can't tell you that. Not until you've agreed."

Years down the line, she still wouldn't understand why she did it, why she decided to trust this woman she knew nothing about, to trust this woman that seems too exuberant, too dangerous. Still, the i_okay/i _slid out of her mouth so easily it nearly surprised both of them. Only one of them, however, allowed it to show.

"Okay," the woman said slowly. "But just so you are aware, just so you are absolutely certain, this agreement right here, right now, is as good as a binding contract. There are absolutely no defaults."

Nodding, she cocked her head to the side and raised her cup of tea in a mock toast, exhibiting an amount of confidence no sixteen year old had a right to have. "Okay," she repeated firmly. The woman just smiled an amused, predatory smile that set her nerve endings on edge.

"What should I call you?"

She thought of her mother then for some inexplicable reason, her father, too. Random memories flowed back in spurts – her mother's smile, her mother's laugh, her father's fingers against her cheek, his touch warm and tender, his voice thick with cheap whisky as he murmured hopelessly, _you look just like my Sophia, my perfect, lovely Sophia._

Clearing her throat, she set her cup to the side and sat up straighter, squaring her shoulders and pressing her lips into a thin line.

"Sophie," she lied. "You can call me Sophie."


	2. Chapter 2

_****_Thank you so much to all those who have read and reviewed! Your encouragement means so much.

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_**[T W O]**_

This is how the team decides to relocate to Portland:

Back at the cave, Eliot, Parker, and Hardison huddle around the table in the center of the room as they argue endlessly over the implausibility of an Eliot Signal. Eliot still doesn't understand how he would be able to see it in broad daylight, Hardison assures him he'll come up with a proper answer because he's Hardison, and Parker is stuck on whether or not his signature should be a wolf or a knife.

Eliot prefers the knife, Parker the wolf. Before Parker can begin a whole other conversation about what her own call signal would be and how if they took out the north wall and built an elevator, they would be able to fit their own personalized cars in the cave, Sophie decides it is time to intervene. Also, she hears Nate's footsteps in the distance, the shuffle of his gait closing in. After they both spent the entire trip back listening to the very detailed, very well thought out pro and con list entitled _Why We Should Keep the Batcave, _Sophie figures one more mention of it would probably put Nate even further over the edge.

After the day he's had, he really doesn't need any help in that regard.

So, she cuts off whatever Parker was going to say by offering: "How about a wolf _with _a knife in its mouth?" as a plausible alternative. "Or, just, you know, a fist getting ready to hit something. Like a punch. Like a punching fist. What describes Eliot better than that?" Sophie makes the motion with her arm, her fingers curled tightly inward as she thrusts her fist upward.

Eliot grins in appreciation and mutters in Hardison's general direction: "Now that's what I'm talking about. See? She gets it, man."

Parker merely laughs.

"Sophie," Nate says, now within earshot. His tone is a cross between annoyance and amusement and she looks over to see him stalking towards them, some sort of map under his uninjured arm. He's trying very hard not to smile. "Don't encourage them." He moves some things out the way and unfolds the large map across the table, using a rock and a taser of all things to keep the edges from curling under. He looks at Sophie and cocks his head towards the map of the continental United States. She glances at him, then the map, and doesn't quite understand why he's looking at her as if she should be able to read his mind. When she just continues to stare at him blankly, he says, "Close your eyes and point," as if it explains everything.

She arches an eyebrow. "And what?"

"And then we'll now where we're headed."

Sophie laughs. She simply can't help it. Here he is in the same clothes he's been wearing for days, staring at her as if she, of all people, holds all the answers and she just has to laugh because this has to be a joke, it just has to be – except Nate Ford doesn't know how to joke. Any other reaction seems wildly inappropriate and she reaches for him, placing the back of her hand flat against his forehead. "Are you feeling alright?" she asks. "I think we should take you to the hospital, I really do. I know I said you'd be fine, but I'm not a doctor. I did pretend to be one once, but as you would be quick to point out that means absolutely nothing_._"

Shrugging her off, Nate merely motions to the map with a look that clearly reads: _get on with it already._

"Seriously?" She looks at him incredulously. "_Seriously? _This is what your big plans involved? Are you insane? Wait," Sophie holds up a hand to stop whatever is about to come out of his mouth. "Do not bother to answer that. I already know the answer."

Nate shrugs. "The plans are a work in progress."

"Well just for future clarification, Nate, when you tell somebody _I have big plans _you should probably specify that such plans have not been properly flushed out yet, nor even really been thought all the way through, and therefore people should think twice before blindly trusting them."

"Blindly trusting? Sophie that's a little –"

It is at that exact moment when Hardison cuts in: "Whoa. Whoa. _Whoa. _Let us just slow this train down for a hot minute. Why does Sophie get to choose?"

"I don't want to choose. You do it."

"I don't understand why we have to go anywhere," Parker says and Sophie turns her head to glance in her direction. Parker is doing this thing with her face that makes Sophie both sad and happy at the same time because it means Parker is having an emotion, but she's not sure whether or not she should show it because she doesn't really understand what it is. "I was just starting to like Boston."

Eliot, to his credit, does not roll his eyes, but when he speaks his tone is harsher than necessary. "Think about it, okay? After the last few weeks we could use a change of scenery. It's in our best interest to move on and set up shop elsewhere."

They're all quiet for a moment, the five of them standing around the large table, the map spread out between them. Nate looks at Sophie and Sophie looks at Nate and after a moment of careful consideration and rationalization along the lines of _what could we possible have left to lose?_ she merely shrugs her approval, arms crossing in an act of acceptance.

The rest follow. They usually do.

Except Hardison who says, "I still don't understand why Sophie gets to choose. I object to the blatant display of favoritism."

"Oh, for chrissakes, Hardison, if it means that much to you, why don't you just do it?"

"Fine," he makes a show out of stretching his arms and cracking his fingers. Sophie can't decide whether or not she wants to laugh or roll her eyes. The latter wins out. "I will."

"Well thank god for that," Nate deadpans. "It's settled then." He motions towards Hardison. "You'll pick and no matter what the outcome is, no matter how much somebody may dislike it, there will be no further objections, okay? End of discussion." Nate takes a moment to look at every single one of them before continuing, "We are moving on."

After they all agree Hardison makes a huge display out of rolling up his nonexistent sleeves and closing his eyes, exaggeratedly moving his index finger around and around in circles. But before he can actually point, Parker interrupts him.

"Choose someplace warm –"

"–And with good shopping–"

"–And someplace near water –"

Hardison glances towards Nate, waiting for him to interject. In typical Nate fashion, however, he simply says, "Just get on with it, Hardison."

With a thud, the tip of his index finger lands on the far left corner of the map. They all lean in carefully to see it covering a tiny dot labeled _Portland. _

Eliot is the first to speak: "Damn it, Hardison."

xXx

It didn't stop with one job. She, Gabrielle, and the man Sophie only knew only as Anthony formed something akin to a team over the following year. They spent weeks planning an extraction and always executed it without fault, robbing the ridiculously wealthy of some of their most prized possessions and pocketing the money from the resulting sale. She never told her father, but she suspects he knew. Sophie spread herself thin working both sides and taking care of her brothers and sisters – teaching them how to tie their shoes and the art of arithmetic – but the money Gabrielle provided her with after was more than worth it. Sophie kept it hidden in between the fading pages of Tolstoy and Dickens and under her mattress. Her father spent his money on cheap whiskey. She spent hers on groceries and electric, transitioning into the role as mother, of caretaker for her siblings that had already lost one parent and were quick on their way to losing another.

Like her father before them, Gabrielle and Anthony kept Sophie on the sidelines. Only instead of painting forgeries of masterpieces, she studied materials on sculptures and priceless antiquities until her eyes bled and then replicated them impeccably.

It took time and more than a little effort on Sophie's behalf, but after careful planning and strategy, Gabrielle, in turn, started to accept Sophie for what she was – a protégé, a valuable asset. Sophie soaked up all the knowledge the surrounding world had to offer and Gabrielle, well, Gabrielle quite liked having somebody to bestow all of her own personal knowledge on, she liked being able to mold Sophie – young, still horribly impressionable Sophie – into a perfect, indestructible thief.

In another life, maybe, Sophie could have gained admittance into Oxford or Cambridge. She maybe could have studied art the respectable way and become something honest, something that would have made her mother proud. But the life of thief, of a liar, while dishonest, was an alluring one. Deep down, under all the lies and facades she had molded and perfected so early on, she had known, since that very first day in the café near Buckingham with that tantalizing thrill running up her spine, with her father's warm, proud smile beaming down at her as encouragement that for better or worse this was the life she was meant to lead.

It would have been all too easy to blame her father for forcing her down this path, for planting the seed that grew and blossomed inside of her, pushing her towards a life of crime. But Sophie has always been smarter than most and she knows she was not forced into this life. She chose it. Some people are born to be mothers, inventors, doctors. Sophie was born to be an artist – just not in the most conventional way.

It was on her seventeenth birthday that she left England to travel Europe against both her father and Aunt Emily's wishes. There was a conversation, of course, a long weekend spent in the country with her aunt while her father found solace back home in the bottom of a bottle. Upstairs, her brothers and sisters slept soundly, and Sophie fidgeted in her seat under Emily's watchful gaze, but her fingers were steady as they wrapped around her glass of water.

"I'm going to go away for a little while," she said. Her voice was smooth and certain and filled with practiced confidence. "I need you to promise me that you'll take care of them. I need you to promise me that they'll be okay."

Emily reached out, covering one of Sophie's hands with her own. "I promise," the older woman said and because Sophie had long since developed the keen ability to read people, to distinguish lies from the truth, she sighed, breathed, and knew her family would be all right.

Sophie left in the dead of night, made her rounds to her siblings' rooms and kissed each of their foreheads, murmuring her goodbyes into the darkness. Sophie placed all the money she had collected over the years on her aunt's nightstand with a note for her father telling him not to worry and reminding him that her mother had taught her to be strong and that she would be fine.

Everything was left behind – her clothes, her jewelry, and the pair of gorgeous, leather boots she had bought after her very first job with Gabrielle. The only thing she took with her were the clothes on her back and her mother's old, worn book of art with the pages wrinkled by time, the spine cracked right down the middle.

There was regret and guilt stuck in the back of her throat, the taste so bitter she nearly choked on it, but she swallowed around it and shoved it deep down. She buried it in the place where she kept memories of her mother, of those early years with her fingers warm and solid over Sophie's as they traced the outlines of ballerinas and landscapes. She buried it in the place where she hid all the things she wished she could forget.

To say she never looked back would be a lie, but Sophie was nothing if not an excellent liar, so nobody ever suspected otherwise.

It was during this time that Gabrielle taught her the art of the perfect con.

Her father laid the groundwork, of course, by spending hours and days and long weekends teaching Sophie how to read people, how to look into every movement and word, how nothing was a coincidence or chance. It was Gabrielle that taught her how to use all of that to her advantage. The art of grifting, Gabrielle explained during those first few months together, was a complicated, but beautiful mess and there were only two rules one must remember at all times.

Rule number one: trust no one and protect yourself at all costs.

Rule number two: if you respect rule number one, Gabrielle explained, you will never need rule number two.

They started in Paris. Sophie watched with keen interest as Gabrielle used her wits and beauty to manipulate a billionaire into handing over the combination to his vault, leaving all of his jewels and money vulnerable to the very person he least suspected of debauchery. After, Gabrielle took Sophie on her very first trip to the States, to Boston, where they grifted their way past security at the _Gardner _with nothing but a distraction, a smile, and a police uniform that hugged in all the right places. They proceeded to steal Vermeer's _The Concert, _three Rembrandts, and a finial in the shape of an eagle from the Napoleonic flag that Sophie simply could not resist.

The grift, Gabrielle explained, always started with a lie that was cultivated and strengthened until it formed the perfect truth.

Gabrielle taught Sophie how to create aliases – people who were facets of herself, that possessed a history with just the right amount of truth so Sophie would never forget the intricate details. Sophie spent a bitter winter in Moscow inventing Annie Kroy. Later, she spent a warm spring in Prague inventing Isobel and a summer in Berlin concocting the long, sordid history of Katherine. It was in London, as she buried old ghosts, that she started the long, painstaking process of breathing life into Charlotte. Sophie gave these women families, histories, birthdays and anniversaries. She gave them pasts, presents, and futures. She perfected accents, picked up languages along the way.

She used all the lies she spun to con both women and men out of their priceless antiques and art, out of millions of dollars again and again and never once felt guilty about it. Never once looked back.

Sophie fell in love over and over again with that spark, that thrill that coursed through her during every lie, after every job well done.

Most of Sophie's early twenties were spent traipsing across Europe, conning wealthy businessmen and the descendents of royals out of their fortunes and prized possessions. Anthony came and went, a few other retrieval experts as well, and after a couple of years it was just Gabrielle and Sophie, reinventing the art of grifting one con at a time. Their relationship, the trust between them cemented after every score, every mark successfully taken. Sophie trusted Gabrielle and Gabrielle trusted Sophie, although, years later, they both would see the faultiness in their line of thinking.

At twenty-one Sophie was an heiress to an oil fortune in Saudi Arabia who left a wealthy young sheik with nothing but a penny to his name. Later, she was the long lost descendant of the Bourbon Dynasty in France that destroyed a marriage by swiping sfamily heirlooms and jewels and bedding the handsome young royal. She spent her twenty-third birthday on a yacht in Greece, seducing a man with little effort and manipulating him into handing over his entire fortune worth millions without a second thought. They took a long vacation after that success, the two of them traveling east, to Dubai, conning their way into a suite in the Burj Khalifa.

This was where they met Jeremy.

This was also where the whole façade came to a screeching halt.

Jeremy was a tall, dark and smooth-talking American. He found them, their names synonymous with success and fortune even a world over. Sophie immediately distrusted him. She saw the dishonesty in his eyes and in the way he carried himself. Gabrielle made the fatal mistake of falling for him instantly. Sophie's concerns were voiced, but Gabrielle insisted that he could be trusted, insisted that she trusted him and that meant that Sophie should too. There was a certain amount of truth in that, and against her better judgment, against every fiber in her being that said not to, Sophie decided to trust Gabrielle, and by default, Jeremy.

With Jeremy in tow, the cons they performed became grander, increasingly complex. He was always pushing the limits, pushing them just to the point of breaking. Gabrielle faltered just slightly under the strain, but Sophie adapted easily by becoming whoever she was needed to be, by playing the roles she was dealt with ease. For a while things went smoothly, for a brief span of time Sophie started to ignore that feeling in the pit of her gut that told her this guy was trouble, that this situation was going to lead nowhere good.

Just as she began to forget, there were rumors, strange men in dark corners, an unmarked van consistently parked down the street from their loft in Versailles.

As soon as Sophie began to let her guard down, Interpol started to close in.

"It's him," Sophie told Gabrielle. They were knee-deep in a con that was too big, too grand to be controlled by just three people. "It has to be him. The authorities aren't closing in because we made a mistake. We don't make mistakes, Gabrielle. They're closing in because somebody betrayed us and if it wasn't me and if it wasn't you then that only leaves him."

Gabrielle's defense of Jeremy was vehement, brutal. She was blinded by lust, her judgment clouded by love and Sophie almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation, right there, right in the middle of a Parisian café with onlookers – some of whom she could only assume carried a badge and a gun under their tweed coats. The Gabrielle she met at a café in London all those years ago would never have allowed this situation to occur. The Gabrielle Sophie met when she was sixteen never would have gone this soft. The battle could not be won; Sophie saw that and accepted it, so instead she moved on, tried to convince Gabrielle to pull back, to shut the con down before it was too late. She took the argument to Jeremy as well, carefully leaving out her suspicions concerning his loyalties. It came as no surprise that both adamantly refused.

In the end, Sophie rationalized that they really left her no choice. While her father taught her how to lie and Gabrielle taught her how to con, it was Sophie that taught herself how to be ruthless.

Once more she found herself leaving in the middle of the night with nothing but the clothes on her back and the book that once belonged to her mother under her arm. That time, however, she didn't leave behind money and decided to take her fair share of the cut for her efforts. She cleaned out her half of the storage container she and Gabrielle kept in Paris, shipping the art, jewels, and sculptures to an untraceable location in London. Sophie quickly followed suit.

Gabrielle and Jeremy were picked up a week later in Brussels, or so Sophie heard through the grapevine. She could only imagine the look on Gabrielle's face when she woke the morning after Sophie's departure, when she noticed the storage container half-empty. If Sophie closed her eyes she could picture the emotions that flickered across the woman's face – the confusion, the anger, the betrayal, and then, finally the understanding.

_Rule number one_, she had told Sophie all those years ago, _trust no one and protect yourself at all costs._

Sophie was not foolish enough to make the same mistake twice.

xXx

As a whole, the team decides to take a vacation both from conning – so they say, anyway – and each other.

It is Nate who suggests it despite having no plans to do the same himself. The others agree readily because the lull after San Lorenzo was meant to last much, much longer until Nate called upon them so they could steal a mountain, again, and afterwards everything just became more and more complicated as the weeks and months went by.

Parker decides on Madrid because the _Prado _has just implemented some very intimidating security upgrades and Parker likes to challenge herself whilst proving she is still the best. Eliot doesn't tell anyone where he is going, but Sophie imagines it involves solitude, fishing, and beautiful women who inexplicably like those sorts of things. She also knows that he will stay close, constantly resisting the urge to go completely underground, making it easy to find him if they look hard enough. And Hardison, well, Hardison doesn't exactly say where he's going, or if he is even going anywhere, but Sophie suspects Madrid is definitely on his itinerary.

Nate is expectant when he looks at her then, as the conversation unfolds around them. It's a look she knows too well, a look she loathes – it is one that clearly gives the indication that even now, even after all the ways she has proven her loyalty to both him and their team, he still doesn't trust her fully. Nate holds onto old betrayals, is better at grudges than all of them combined, and is waiting for Sophie to uproot their lives again by leaving. Eliot and Hardison argue over something menial and rather insignificant and all Sophie can do is laugh, really, at the look on Nate's face because she simply cannot wrap her head around the fact that he still doesn't fully trust her. She simply can't understand how after everything they've been through together, after everything they've been through together in the past week alone, they are still constantly on the cusp of trusting each other, but never quite there, never willing to commit fully to the action.

It's just as much her fault as his, this distance that is constantly between them. They are first and foremost creatures of habit, people that avoid change at all costs. Nate may have stood before her, bloody and broken but mending no less than two hours before and said that he was going to make some changes, that he had plans, but they both know saying the words and meaning them is completely separate from actually following through. Still, Sophie swallows around the slight bitterness in the back of her throat and lets it go in the hopes that one day it won't be so difficult. In hopes that since now some of his ghosts have been buried they can move on together as a collective unit instead of two separate entities that just happen to be on the same trajectory.

So when Hardison calls over his shoulder to ask her where she will be headed so he can make the arrangements, Sophie merely mumbles something about Portland, shrugging in Nate's direction as if to say _what did you expect? _His smile twists at the corner of his mouth for just a moment, but Sophie catches it easily, more in tune to Nate than most people are to themselves.

After the others head in their mostly separate directions, Sophie sets about packing what little they brought with them into boxes, and making the arrangements to have it taken above ground and shipped to Portland via the few acquaintances she still keeps in New York. Nate tries his best to help, but his shoulder protests every time he moves to lift something. Sophie catches the grimace every time because even her most worthy opponents were never able to hide anything from her and Nate has history working against him. She mentions the doctor tirelessly, but he stubbornly refuses.

So, mostly Sophie packs and Nate plots, researching ideal locations for future offices and apartments in the downtown Portland area. She packs the fragments of their lives gingerly into boxes and it is as she carefully places the portrait of Old Nate into a crate that she remembers a time, not too long ago, when she found herself at a crossroads of sorts, much like now. She remembers how difficult it had been to exist in a world she and Nate used to share without his presence bleeding into every aspect of her life. How even after she returned home from trying to find all those pieces of herself that she'd lost along the way, she realized she was no closer to discovering the truth of who she was under the lies and facades than she had been before she left.

It had surprised her then how much easier it was to accept the unknown with her team by her side. How even without Nate there to support her in ways only he could, she still kept him close – slept in his bed, drank his coffee, used _his _mug every morning out of spite even though he would never know the difference.

She wonders if he is privy to that. If when he returned home he could still smell her perfume on his pillows, if he noticed the faint stain of lipstick along the rim of his favorite mug or the slight flecks of make-up and mascara on the porcelain of his bathroom sink that she didn't have time to clean up. She wonders if he knows all of that, if he realized how much she missed him, how much she needed him both now and then, if he would still look at her the way he did earlier – vulnerable and full of distrust, waiting for her to run out at any moment.

Mostly Sophie wonders if he, too, has stopped considering home as just a location, a place with four walls and a bed to rest and started attributing it to people again, to their team like she has.

On the plane to Portland Nate grumbles about the sling that she's making him wear on his arm well into take-off. His mutterings only decrease when Sophie finally flags down a stewardess and asks her to bring him a glass of vodka with a splash of orange juice so her sanity could be spared. Some time into hour two, when she's finished flipping through both her magazines and the ones compliments of the airline, she pulls out a copy of _The New York Times _and passes him the Sports pages without a mere thought.

When Sophie is halfway through the first section, Nate says, "You could have gone to Paris, you know. Or anywhere, really. I would have been fine."

She pauses for only a moment, her eyes scanning the last line of the article twice before she moves on. As she turns the page, careful not to dirty her fingers with the ink, she merely replies quietly, "I know."

"I mean –"

"I know what you mean. And if I wanted to go to Paris, I would be in Paris right now. You of all people should know that."

Nodding, Nate turns back to his portion of the paper. "Okay."

By default, Nate is a terrible conversationalist. Even before, even when their relationship was in its infancy and they were running and chasing each other around Europe, it took a large amount of coaxing, conning, and whiskey to get him to open up to her. Even then the outcomes were minimal at best, both of them working overtime to keep the other at arms length, only letting them close when it was strategic, when it would garner them that elusive upper hand. History makes Sophie privy to the knowledge that there is a very small window of time where one can easily segue from something he specifically wanted to talk about and onto something altogether different without Nate shutting the conversation down.

Therefore, Sophie has learned that the window she has is miniscule at best, so before it can close completely she says, "We need to get better at this, Nate. We need to learn how to communicate with one another outside of work." She has to stop herself from adding, _and by we I mean you, _because it isn't entirely fair and he wouldn't hesitate on calling her on it.

He surprises her completely by replying, "I know," so quietly she has to strain to hear him over the hum of conversations surrounding them and the faint roar of the jet's engine in the distance.

It's more of a response than she expected, than she ever could have hoped for, really, so she takes it and holds on. Starts thumbing through the next section of the paper, passing him the one she previously finished for when he's ready, and focuses on the weight of his breaths as she reads. Sophie falls asleep sometime after with her head on his shoulder, her body curled into his around the armrest between them.

When she wakes hours later, the first thing she notices is his ink-stained fingers wrapped securely around hers.


	3. Chapter 3

All the thanks in the world to Sphinx, Lola, HuttonFan, Gibbsrossi, JustBecause2012, and all the people who have been reading along and taking the time comment!

* * *

**_[ THREE ]_**

While Sophie was constantly evolving, scattering pieces of herself as she made her way through Europe, London, she found, remained stagnant, unchanged by time.

Sophie returned there older, wiser, any soft edges she may have had once upon a time turned hard and angular with experience. She returned as Charlotte – young, beautiful Charlotte who had a penchant for expensive wine and an aspiration to be a Shakespearian actress. As Charlotte, she found home with the family she began conning years before, with the man she began conning years before. She fooled William into falling in love with her and his family into accepting her. It didn't take long – Sophie had long since mastered the art of using a single look, the softest touch to portray her intentions, for baiting a man until he was undoubtedly wrapped around her finger.

Lies were easy to sell, she knew, and love easier because it wasn't real, because it was an emotion and emotions were easily formed and manipulated. By this point in her life, Sophie had developed the frightening capability of being able to bend everything and everyone to her will.

At first, she decided she wasn't going to swindle them out of their jewels or fortune and instead focused on developing an alias that would be able to give her admittance past doors that seemed too difficult to open before. So, you see, she married William because she liked him, of course, but mostly because as Lady Charlotte Prentice people would give her access to all sorts of lovely and expensive things that were just begging to be stolen without so much of a second thought. Being Lady Charlotte Prentice made life easier and Sophie appreciated convenience. It was as Charlotte that Sophie acquired the infamous Raphael and the Antioch manuscripts. It was also, most importantly, through Charlotte's connections that Sophie was able to gain access into the Vatican and swipe the second statue of David – the pride and joy of her stolen collection.

It was also as Charlotte that Sophie discovered the largest issue regarding the long con – it was entirely too easy to become lost in the façade, to start finding the tiniest bit of truth in the lies. As time weaned on she started to appreciate the people she surrounded herself with, started to feel at home with the family she had conned into accepting her. At night, William returned home to her, settled into their bed and whispered _I love you_as she curled into him, pressing a leg between his. She said it back every single time out of routine, kissed his mouth, molded her body against his, and eventually started to see the lines between lies and truth blur almost completely.

When scandal broke of William's infidelities, Sophie took it as her opportunity to flee. She had known, of course, before everyone. She recognized the floral perfume that lingered on his clothes, the bouts of inattention, the lipstick smudged on his collar. Sophie could recognize a liar from a distance because she was one, and if she had been able to maintain any impartiality at all, she would have been proud of his attempt to con her. But instead his lies and indiscretions had wounded her profoundly, and she couldn't distinguish between whether or not she was upset that he had the audacity to lie or the fact that she had allowed him to get so close that those lies were able to make such an impact.

So, instead of taking the time to figure out what that meant, she ran.

She met Marcus Starke in Barcelona and slept with him first just to prove that she could, just to prove that William's effect on her wasn't lasting, that she had just been confused and mistaken. It was only later that she recruited Marcus for his skills in forgery to help her steal the Sancy diamond from the Louvre and a Manet from Berlin.

Starke had a world-class mind that could rival most everyone she had ever met, but Sophie was better, brighter, more ruthless and cunning. She took point and he mostly followed her lead and while they formed a shaky alliance, while he lusted after her and she indulged in said lust every once in a while, she never allowed him to get too close, never allowed herself to become a permanent fixture in his revolving door of teams. Sophie didn't trust Starke, but he respected her and she respected him. So while she mostly worked alone, there was always a job that was too big for just one person, so she called on him when she felt it was appropriate and always answered the phone when he reached out to her to say he needed her help.

Mostly, Sophie just preferred it when people owed her things. It meant that she had sole possession of the upper hand. It meant that she was in complete control of any given situation.

They had a spectacular run together in the late nineties – Copenhagen, Berlin, and a glorious, profitable three-month run in Moscow that was cut short by some hot shot insurance agent who didn't know when to quit.

It was around this time, after Starke had left the cold for a yacht in the South of France, that Annie Kroy met Tara Cole at the Russian boarder. Sophie was using her alias to swindle money and a few priceless antiques out of a wealthy businessman. Said businessman had some very lucrative side businesses that consisted of gunrunning, money laundering, and, unfortunately for her, murder.

Of course, Sophie wasn't aware of that at the time she had committed to the con. Some people just knew how to hide their secrets better than others.

The deal went south quickly. Apparently, what Sophie saw as an easy mark was a mark with some very serious internal issues regarding the trust and loyalty of his subordinates. He suspected Interpol had infiltrated his inner circle and before Sophie could think of a proper exit plan guns were firing, creating mayhem with muzzle flare and bullets. Bodies were dropping left and right, and the mark had the audacity to accuse her and a fellow prospective buyer of being undercover agents for Interpol because they somehow managed to be the last ones standing.

The other buyer – a woman who was just tall and blonde enough to be the German she was claiming to be, but had an accent that was too thick to be completely authentic – tried to talk her way out of the situation whilst still closing the deal. Sophie recognized the name she used. It was an alias she had heard in passing, a fellow grifter she had heard stories about, whose work Sophie had _almost_admired. Sophie made it a point to have knowledge of everyone who was anyone and while the other woman was trying to save the deal, Sophie recognized the look in the mark's eyes, the way his index finger flexed over the trigger of the gun he was pointing at the both of them. Mostly, though, she recognized the way he shifted his weight evenly, bracing himself in advance for the recoil of the gun.

In an instant, the blonde lunged forward and wrestled with the man for the gun. A stray shot went off to the right and another into the floor. Instead of waiting to catch a bullet, Sophie abandoned all hope of keeping her hands clean and reached for the gun located on the dead body lying next to her, diving down in one fluid motion as a distraction.

Sophie put a bullet in the mark's head before he could even react, before he ever even realized she had the gun in her hands.

After a moment, she crouched down next to his body and checked for a pulse, bloodying her hands in the process. She breathed a sigh of relief when she felt nothing under her fingertips except for skin that was still warm. The other buyer followed her out into the cold, helped her dispose of the gun, and removed any and all evidence that they were ever in the warehouse, city, or even country for that matter. They stuck together not out of necessity but because they simply didn't trust one another. It wasn't personal, merely business – Sophie didn't want to take the chance that this woman would get left behind and picked up by the authorities, leaving her no other choice but to burn Sophie's rock solid alias in an effort to save herself.

Instead, they flirted their way past border control together with short skirts and a bottle of whiskey, and when they finally made it safely past said border, the other woman was the first one to speak.

"I guess this would be the appropriate time for me to say thank you," she muttered, dropping the German accent for an American one. Her tone was clipped, and Sophie recognized the unleashed anger underneath her words before she continued, "Although I would just like to point out that I had the situation completely under control and if you had given me five more seconds your intervention would have been completely unnecessary."

"Oh?" Sophie didn't let Annie Kroy fade away as easily, she maintained the harshness in her tone and in her body language. Didn't give any part of herself away to this woman she barely knew. "He was planning to shoot us the moment we walked into that room. Nothing you said was going to stop him."

"You don't know that."

"I _do_ know that."

She seemed to mull that over for a little bit as they walked through a wooded area in search of anything but wilderness. Sophie knew she was more than likely retracing her footsteps, going back over their conversation until she saw the clues she missed, making mental notes so she didn't miss the signs again.

"Thank you," the woman tried again, a little more honestly this time, but Sophie could tell the words were forced, as if she was still, even now, trying to con her way into something. Sophie appreciated the motivation, but didn't allow it show. "You can call me Tara, by the way –"

Sophie made a 'tsk' sound with her teeth and laughed shortly. The sound wasn't kind, void of any and all mirth. "You shouldn't have done that," she singsonged. "Because now I know your name. And now I know how to find you if and when I ever need a favor." Stopping mid-step, Sophie turned to face Tara. "Don't mistake my actions as kindness. I can assure you kindness had nothing to do with what transpired back there."

Tara scoffed. "You're a little full of yourself aren't you?"

"Not without reason."

Tara grinned, flashing her teeth. It was appreciative almost, respectful even. There was noise in the distance – the rumble of an engine, the sound of tires moving over asphalt. They were getting close to civilization again and Sophie sighed with relief because her pantyhose had runs and her feet were killing her and she had actual dirt under her fingernails.

"I think I'm going to like you. In fact," Tara continued, "I think this might just be the start of a very lucrative friendship."

Sophie opened her mouth to make a snide comment about Americans and their awful puns, but instead merely raised an eyebrow and corrected, "Alliance. I don't have friends."

Tara shrugged as she stalked ahead, taking the lead. "I can work with that."

There was the smallest smile playing at the corners of Sophie's mouth as she followed.

xXx

The air in Portland is thick with humidity, Spring segueing quickly into summer, and exactly seventy-two hours after Nate cons Latimer and Dubenich into plunging to their deaths the bodies wash ashore somewhere in upstate New York. The news breaks on CNN and plays softly in the lobby of the hotel as she and Nate check-in. The front desk clerk pauses every so often to listen to the report, reaching for the remote to raise the volume, and Sophie watches as Nate's back stiffens, the line of his shoulders hardening. One of her hands fists tightly around the handle of her carryon, the other lingers against the crook of his arm, the pressure slight, mean to be reassuring. She does not ask _are you okay_but the sentiment is there, Nate knows it is there, and the smile he gives her – small and tight, just barely lifting the corner of his mouth – reassures her.

In the elevator, Sophie files in behind him. She glances at him via the steel of the doors as he stares upwards, watching the red numbers climbing higher and higher as they approach their floor. Some moments before, he had shoved a keycard in her hand, his fingers grazing hers softly, lingering with intent. It is routine, really, having separate rooms. They are together, the team knows they are together, but there are lines they like to remain intact, lines they don't dare cross. There was a promise early on, after they finally admitted to themselves after San Lorenzo what they had always known – that whatever was between them wasn't going anywhere, hard as they may try to prove otherwise – that work remained separate from whatever _this_is. Even though they have spread themselves in a completely opposite direction from Eliot, Parker, and Hardison, the routine sticks.

Still, she isn't exactly surprised to find him following closely behind her as they make their way down the hall to their rooms. He passes his own and crowds her door as she slides the card into the lock and listens for the click of it sliding out of place. She pushes the door open with her foot and allows him to enter first, watching as he disappears inside the suite in the direction of the bedroom. Sophie leaves her luggage near the door, engages the deadbolt, and fumbles for her cell phone, clicking it back on for the first time since their plane took off hours before. It starts to ding repeatedly almost immediately, noting the arrival of various text messages and voicemails. There is one from Hardison and quite a few from Parker, all containing some varying degrees of _here_or _made it_and she smiles immediately, reaches up to fiddle with the earbud in her ear only to remember it isn't there.

Now, with the five of the separated by miles and continents, Sophie misses them. She misses the sound of Hardison and Eliot arguing in the background. Sophie misses Parker's mere presence, the delightful sound of her off-key laugh. She actually misses the subtle weight of the earbud in her ear and has to curl her hand into a tight fist to stop her fingers from reaching to fiddle with it once more just out of sheer habit.

She responds to them in kind, her own version of _here_or _made it_condensed into less than a hundred characters. She sends a quick message to Tara to let her know that she is alive and well and to expect a phone call in a few days with explanations. She sends one to Maggie as well just because it feels like the right thing to do, because Sophie knows that is what friends do. She isn't exactly sure when or even how it happened, but Maggie has long since been added to the very short list of people Sophie would do anything to protect.

Thieves are solitary creatures by nature, out of the desperate need for self-preservation. Those two things have all but defined Sophie's life for as long as she can remember, but she knows now what she could not even fathom before. She knows that while being alone and trusting no one may ensure survival, it is no way to live. As she switches the phone over to silent and places it to the side, Sophie takes a moment to reflect back on her time away from the team. She remembers all those months that she spent traveling the world, trying to put her life back together all the while trying to figure out just who she was. It feels like a lifetime ago, really, but she can still remember how she thought of her team every day, how she traveled from London to Istanbul and all the way to Beijing and back again, picking up knickknacks for them, tiny little keepsakes that reminded her of them, of the family she never thought she would have again.

She was always going to return to Boston, to the team, to wherever they may have ended up in the meantime. She knows that now, understands that she left so she could return on _her_terms, not Nate's, not because of some wistful fantasy she had for the two of them that could never be reality because they were no longer those people. She's still not entirely sure if happened that way, if Tara's intervention and Nate's selfishly placed _I need you_didn't sway her resolve, but she does know that it doesn't matter in the general scheme of things. She would do it again, she would protect her team, no questions asked, at any moment in time. It is who she is now.

Wandering further into the suite, she finds Nate sprawled out on her bed, his feet crossed at the ankles, his good arm folded underneath his head and the other curled into a fist atop his stomach. She leans against the doorway, following his line of sight to see the TV on mute and set to CNN. The scroll along the bottom is relaying facts and theories regarding Dubenich and Latimer's demise.

"Admiring your handiwork?" she asks before she can stop herself and his eyes flick to hers sullenly. The surprise, the regret is evident in the way he looks at her and Sophie regrets her words immediately.

"I didn't kill them," he says softly, clicking the TV off.

"No," she nods, pressing her lips into a thin line. "You're right, you didn't."

"Their greed and desperate need for self-preservation killed them," he clarifies and she knows it is for his own benefit and not hers. "I –"

She cuts off his reply. "Just provided the leverage?"

Nate doesn't respond and she doesn't exactly expect him to. The guilt over what happened near that dam will come and go because Nate excels at self-deprecation and holds on to every mistake, every single thing that could be used for self-destruction later on down the road. Sophie doesn't like what happened, she doesn't like the man she saw there, the man that conned two men into their deaths, but she can begin to understand it. She knows Dubenich, she knows he would have searched to the ends of the earth to find the five of them and destroyed them in whatever way he saw fit. She understands Nate's need for revenge more than ever now because they are a team; they are a family. While she doesn't agree with it, there is a part of her she doesn't like to admit exists that might do the same given the right situation. She is just better at hiding it than him.

She meanders further into the room, kicking off her shoes one by one when she has reached the foot of the bed. "I heard from the others," she tells him.

Nate raises an eyebrow. "They get in okay?"

Sophie nods, the mattress dipping under her weight as she crawls over the comforter and towards him. She twists onto her back when she's finally in her position beside him, her lungs heaving a sigh as the mattress molds around her, her body shifting until it is comfortable. She doesn't move into Nate, just lays there beside him, her own legs crossing at the ankles. She flattens her palms against the mattress, curls them into fists before allowing them to just lay there, still.

"Hardison and Parker are probably stealing security plans and hacking their way into the _Prado_as we speak." At Nate's look she further clarifies, "Don't worry. I told them they had to put everything back after they were done."

"And Eliot?"

Turning her head to face him, she smiles. "You know Eliot. He'll reach out when he's ready."

Nodding, Nate starts to shift closer to her, wincing when he puts too much pressure on his injured shoulder. When she reaches for him it is to work at the buttons of his shirt, but only so she can slip her fingers inside and check the bandage and wound underneath. When she's satisfied by its appearance, she runs her index finger along the edge of the tape, securing the dressing once more as she makes a mental note to change it again before bed.

"Admiring your handiwork?" he asks, almost teasing, and she looks up to find him smiling at her.

"You're going to have a quite a scar." She moves to rest fully on her side, using an arm for support as the other travels to his stomach, to the bit of flesh that stretches between his shirt and the waist of his pants. She slips her fingers underneath, to the puckering of skin she knows is there, and traces the ridges of the scar from memory. He hisses a sigh and Sophie smiles as she watches his eyes fall closed. "You seem to get shot quite a bit."

"Always in the right place at the wrong time, I guess."

"I'm actually more inclined to think it's that good old Catholic guilt working against you," she murmurs quietly.

"How so?"

Sophie shrugs softly, her eyesight slipping up to his. "You think you deserve to be shot; you put yourself in situations where you may be shot, so you get shot. It's almost an inevitability with you."

Humming something noncommittal in the back of his throat, Nate shifts closer to her still. Sophie's fingers stop their gentle movements, her palm flatting against the smooth skin of his belly, rising and falling as he breathes.

"It's self destructive," she tells him. She stares at her hand against his skin as she talks. "I'm going to need you to work on that, Nate."

There is a short span of time where she doesn't breathe as she waits for his response, where she tries to conjure up in her mind how he may respond before the words leave his mouth. She almost doesn't realize he is talking until she feels the vibrations against the bones of her hand.

"I am." He pauses and clears his throat. "I will," he says quietly and she turns to look at him then, sees him looking at her with such affection and love and a smile that she almost only sees when he has let his carefully placed guard down and regales her with stories of Sam.

"Okay," she sighs after a long moment. Her fingers start to move again, drawing patterns against where they rest on his stomach, her eyes moving from his to watch the rise and fall of his chest.

After a moment, his hand reaches for hers, his fingers weaving their way through her own. "I'm glad you're here," he says, and she smiles a little on reflex, feels herself moving into him fully and without thought, her body molding and curling around his. Nate shifts to accommodate her, allows her to rest against his good shoulder, his good arm wrapping around her tightly, pulling her close. His fingers slip under the neck of her shirt to search for the small, nearly faded scar he'd put there years before.

His touch settles at the base of her spine and Sophie sighs, sated and suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion, her body and bones giving in under the enormous weight of the past few weeks. She feels as if she could sleep for days, her eyes heavy, lashes slipping against her cheeks as his fingers tighten and loosen around hers.

"Wake me when you do?" she murmurs, another habit of theirs.

"Yeah," Nate says, humming something affirmative in the back of his throat. Sophie finally allows her eyes to close, the weight of her breaths evening as she falls asleep.

xXx

Sophie Devereaux met Nathan Ford on a warm night in Prague some time in the very beginning of that glorious run she had with Marcus. The air was so warm and humid that sweat pooled at the small of her back, lingering with the adrenaline that she tasted in the back of her throat the moment she laid eyes on the painting. The heat made her hands slippery, fingers sliding awkwardly as she ever so carefully rolled the canvas into the hollow crutches under her arms – the crutches that matched the fake cast on her left foot. Not the most original idea, she knew, but it worked, never failing to open doors she would have otherwise had to pick.

It was important to know that the Degas was not her original goal. In the beginning, when the heist was in the tender planning stages, she had no idea the mark even had a Degas, but once she slipped past security and onto the upper levels of the mark's home, there it was, the center of his collection, taunting her. Sophie's carefully planned escape route was botched the moment she decided to go back for it, the moment she decided to get greedy, so instead she had to make her way back through the party, smiling her way past the mark and all of his party goers and right out the front door.

Her eyes found Nate first because it was her job to survey her surroundings, because she had an innate ability to read body language, to see through the words that filled the space around her. She knew how to identify a potential threat by glancing at the way a person held their glass of champagne – too loosely and they were uncomfortable, out of place; tightly meant they felt anchored, at ease – and Nathan Ford held his tumbler of whiskey as if he could drop it at a moment's notice. She passed by him and bumped his shoulder on purpose. Felt a spark of electricity settle in the base of her stomach as he glanced in her direction, as she mumbled her _so sorry, monsieur_with a loose smile, and picked his wallet right out of his jacket pocket just because she could.

Five more steps and she would have had a clear getaway, would have slipped right out the front door and into the streets, but something lingered – a feeling she had trouble burying right away, that didn't seem to _want_to be buried – and she turned, just at the last moment, for one final look.

He was watching her, of course. His hair was slicked back, tumbler gone from his fingers, his mouth set into a firm line. He was watching her, waiting to pounce because he _knew._Knew who she was. What she was. What she was there to do. What she had already done. But there was a room full of people and noise and conversations between them and she had too much of a head start. He would never make it. She knew it and he knew it, too, so instead Sophie merely paused in the doorway, cocked her head to the side. Her smile was both dangerous and worn, a challenge of sorts, before she slipped into the darkness and warmth of the night.

She ran. He chased.

It was a game Sophie loved to play and Nathan Ford was more than a worthy opponent. She taunted him, teased him, tricked him, but he never failed to see through every con, every lie; he never failed to be just a mere step behind her at all times. There were close calls – Venice, Amsterdam, those wonderful, profitable three months in Moscow where she slipped up just to allow him to get close, just so she could feel the rush of knowing he was closing in before she slipped past the border in the middle of the night with Tara in tow.

Eventually she stopped stealing on a whim, stopped stealing whatever simply caught her eye. Eventually she started stealing things she knew his company insured just to mess with him, just to tangle the web that much more.

Sophie started to leave him notes and clues, her scrawl hasty but precise, her words always carefully chosen. She left treasure maps to lead him to things she had stolen and he wanted back. After a misstep on both their parts that almost landed them both in a Uzbekistan prison, she left a sixty-year-old bottle of bourbon – her favorite, not his – in his hotel room with a note that read: _Think of me when you drink this, darling. Better luck next time._

When he finally caught up with her in Damascus, she wasn't quite sure it was because she allowed him to or if he was simply that good. Still, she didn't even see him, didn't even think to look for him while she made her way out of the house of the woman she had just spent weeks conning, another tiny Fabergé egg hidden in the lining of her jacket to add to her collection.

Nate spoke, his tone low and just for her just as the door shut behind her. "You are just borrowing that, right?"

Sophie stopped dead in her tracks, tried to devise an exit strategy on reflex, but all of her escape routes were too lengthy – her car was too far away, the subway was six blocks over, and she was surely not going to try to make a run for it in her brand new Jimmy Choo boots. So instead, she turned on her heel, the smile curling around her mouth practiced and learned as she faced him.

"I don't believe we've formally met," she said, voice smooth, smile dangerous. She started to cross the distance to him, her heels clicking against the concrete as she did so, but he shifted his weight, fidgeted with his jacket in just the right way. His gun gleamed proudly under the bright sun. Sophie took another step closer, unfazed. "Tell me, Mr. Ford, does my reputation precede me?"

"It brought me here," he started; he bit the inside of his cheek in an effort to contain the smile she knew was just twitching to cross his mouth. "To you. To that Fabergé egg you have in your inner coat pocket_."_

There was a pair of handcuffs in his back pocket, she could tell by the way he carried his weight, and that should have scared her, it should have made her take a step back and flee. Instead, she decided to test the waters: she took one last step forward, watched him smile, _blush,_and falter so quickly, so slightly that somebody who was not as skilled at surveying human behavior would have missed it altogether. His smile widened; her own grew brazen.

"She practically gave it to me," Sophie pointed out. "She just left it right there in a safe that I cracked in less than five minutes. Honestly, Nathan, you really need to teach your clients about proper security. Otherwise they're basically doing my job for me."

Stepping closer to her, he grinned. He looked handsome, she thought, there in the sun, his eyes solely on her. She stepped closer to him, crowding his personal space entirely, not about to give away the upper hand so quickly. "So," he broached, "you were just, I don't know, testing the security system for weaknesses. Helping me do my job?"

"Exactly."

Slanting his head towards hers, he whispered conspiratorially, "So, I guess we can call it even, yeah?" And suddenly he leaned in so close that she could smell his aftershave, the subtle hint of honey in the cheap hotel shampoo, count the freckles along his nose. It caught her off the guard – him, the moment, the closeness.

She breathed, "That sounds about right." With a smirk, Sophie regained her wits and pressed her palms flat on the lapels of his cotton jacket, fingers curling just slightly before releasing, before leaning in more closely, her lips a hair away from his ear as she said, "What kind of person would I be, after all, if I didn't help a friend in need?"

The closing of Nate's eyes coincided with a sharp inhale, a shaky breath, and she knew it was her opportunity to flee, so she did just that – pivoted on her heel, began to glide quietly in the opposite direction.

"Sophie." He called for her when she was a few yards away and she stopped mid step because his tone was not that of the frazzled, jaw-slacken insurance investigator she thought she was leaving behind. His tone was entirely way too smug for her liking. She turned to face him, anger thrumming under skin when she saw the beautiful, elegant Fabergéegg dangling from his fingers. "Forget something?"

She was shocked, livid, her mind already playing back the last five minutes to decipher the exact moment when he made the lift. Trying to rationalize how she possibly could have missed it. Ultimately, Sophie decided she'd rather not know. Instead, she merely smiled coldly, nodding appreciatively at her opponent that was proving to be entirely too inconvenient.

"Until next time," she said at last, her version of _goodbye._The way he smiled then – wide, teeth bare, smug reminded her entirely too much of her own.

Just then, a car alarm blared in the distance, a horn beeped loudly down the street and Nate turned to look, his attention waning. Sophie had always been able to admit when she had lost, so she finally made her escape.

She ran. He chased.

The cycle continued, Nate tracing her footsteps across Europe carefully, but this time Sophie didn't allow him to get close, didn't linger in cities long after a con was complete. She amassed information concerning all things Nathan Ford from various sources – fellow grifters, thieves, other men and women he had pursued. She had a hacker ally break into IYS' mainframe and make her a copy of his file. Sophie tried to learn more about her opponent in an effort to outwit him, but all she had were facts and statistics, how much money he had saved the company, the name of his wife, his son, his address. She knew that his father was an ex-con, his mother a schoolteacher. Sophie knew that he hailed from Boston, but the accent had all but disappeared from his voice – more than likely due to a lifetime of practice because Nate Ford was not a man who was proud of his roots, of his history.

When he found her in Madrid some time later but only bothered to leave a replica of that damn Fabergé egg at the front desk for her, she decided she may never truly understand him. She may never understand his motivations, or just why he hadn't done his job and arrested her yet.

They didn't meet again until Paris, nearly a year later. She was stealing an entire art collection, pressed for time and committing a cardinal sin by painstakingly cutting the art out of the frames. He burst into the room, yielding a gun, and Sophie acted on instinct, on pure reflex: she grabbed the gun she had lifted from the mark's office, pulled the trigger, and turned to run.

Sophie never expected him to shoot her back. She definitely didn't expect him to allow her to escape after he did so.

There was a doctor in Lyon that didn't ask questions and Sophie went to him instead of stitching herself back together because she didn't want the scar the bullet hole left behind to be any messier than necessary. After, she started to feel guilty – the feeling foreign, biting as it lingered in the back of her throat, so she went to the hospital she knew the emergency services personnel would have taken Nate. Flirted her way past the doctors, smiled her way past the nurses, and waited until he came to.

It was late – or early depending on the perspective – and the sun was just starting to graze the horizon, turning the room a gentle hue of oranges and reds when he stirred. Sophie had spent the better part of the night in and out of consciousness, the painkillers she was given effectively doing their job, and his voice startled her when he spoke.

"You could have killed me." His voice wasn't kind, but it wasn't angry either. She thought she heard a smile in there somewhere, so she opened her eyes to look at him. She was right. Of course she was right. That insufferable smile was twisting at the corners of his mouth. Her own mouth tried to do the same, but she withheld the inclination.

"If I wanted you to be dead, you would be dead," she told him softly.

There was an edge to her tone she used on purpose and he heard it, she knew he did – his brow furrowed, his mouth pressed into a thin line. There was a certain amount of truth behind her words, and he saw that, too. Sophie wondered if she was killing the fantasy he had of her then. The fantasy of the thief that really wasn't all that terrible, that he moralized in an effort to make himself feel better about this game of cat and mouse that could have ended by now if either one of them had really wanted it to. Sophie wondered if she did it on purpose, if she steeled herself and shared a tiniest bit of truth with him to provide them with some much-needed distance, to draw the line more boldly and clearly between them.

Still, after all this time, Sophie heard Gabrielle's voice in her ear: _Trust no one._

"You aren't a murderer."

"Perhaps, not," she replied. She shifted in her seat, crossing and recrossing her legs to get comfortable. She hated how he unhinged her, how his mere presence set her nerves on fire. "But I am a thief and not a very nice one at that."

For a while, Nate just looked at her, scrutinizing every aspect of her. She hated when he did that, when he looked as though he could see right through her and narrow in right on all the lies she had carefully spun. There was no need to worry, of course. Sophie was the best liar one could ever meet, and there was no way he, of all people, was capable of discerning the truth, but still she looked away.

After a moment he said, "Maggie... she's, uh, she's on her way." Sophie's eyes darted back to his and she saw something unsettling there, something she couldn't quite place. "My wife, I mean. They called her," he clarified, and she couldn't help but wonder if the correction was for her benefit or his.

Sophie smiled carefully. "I should probably go then."

"Yeah," he murmured quietly with a slight nod of his head and Sophie didn't need to be told twice, so she stood, smoothing some wrinkles out of her clothes and making her way to the door. "You ruined a perfectly good jacket, by the way," Nate said in parting, and she lingered in the doorway for a moment before turning her head to glance at him.

"You ruined a perfectly good exit strategy," she told him, a hint of teasing in her voice. "Call it even?"

Nate smiled and suddenly there was a nurse trying to shuffle her way past Sophie. "Not even close," he replied and it sounded like a threat with a just a subtle hint of promise.

Waiting a beat, she chose the exact moment he became distracted by the nurse at his bedside to disappear down the hallway.


End file.
